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This is the obligatory New Year’s resolutions, year in review, yadda yadda post, I guess. Might be a shorty.

2013

We all found work, which is good, we found a place to stay, which is good, we are finally able to have a cat and got one from the shelter, which is great. She’s awesome.

I started going to CSW classes in January and BJJ classes in…April I think? It has since become a huge, all-consuming rabbit hole and passion of mine. I stopped going to Savate classes, partly because my knees where starting to hurt (due to shoddy technique on my part) and, to be honest, I don’t like getting hit in the face. I really don’t. And it seemed like the time invested in getting better was out of proportion to how passionate I felt about it and after getting my Green Gloves I made my peace with it and stopped. Now it’s all grappling, all the time.

I lost about 15 lbs., went down two sizes in pants, and am probably in better shape in my mid-thirties than I’ve ever been.

Unfortunately, a mid-thirties body ain’t no young body no more and I severely jacked up my neck with a bulging disk and have been going to PT and doing my PT exercises to squeeze it back in. From what it looks like, inverted guards won’t be part of my game.

2014

Getting more settled in with all the stuff it includes…more on that as it develops. Maybe a car (barf). Got a car. It’s great, But I guess I’m walking less now, because it’s oh so much easier to drive.

Keep going to class, roll more, go to more open mats!I did continue to go to class like a clockwork. I did go to some open mats, but really not that many. That’s okay.

Be more consistent about Yoga. It’s good for me, but I have trouble doing these things on my own and not in a class. As going to an extra gym is pretty much out of the question I need to shut up and do it. The same goes for doing some kind of conditioning/strengthening program. Meeehhh, I did do some Yoga but nowhere near as consistent as I had planned to. I do have a stretching routine that I do before class and I foamroll pretty consistently though.

Tentatively start looking for career options again. Probably something for later this year. This one has to continue in earnest in 2015. 😦

Maybe start competing. I’ve told myself that after I get my first stripe I’ll start to look into this, so this is somewhat conditional on me feeling like I want to see where I am at in a comp setting. Nope. 2014 was unfortunately the year of injuries, with a bulging disc in my neck and a frayed muscle in my shoulder. I’m still interested in competing, but I have to talk to my new instructor about it, because I can’t afford (literally and figuratively) to get hurt badly.

Be more picky about what seminars I visit. They’re expensive and if it’s focusing on stuff I’m not familiar with at all I’m really not feeling like I’m taking anything away from them. So this year, if it ain’t grappling, I ain’t going. Yep. Stuck to this.

Finally drive over to the Pacific Coast, because it’s beautiful! This definitely has to go on the 2015 list, now that we have wheels.

I’m not sure if I’ll continue with the fermentation stuff, but I do want to try some of the herbal concoctions from The Mountain Rose Blog, especially the Fire Cider! Did that. It kinda gold old fairly quickly and with all that fermentation experimenting I did I still can’t get over the smell of it.

Frankly, I have no idea how people can keep up with more than three Podcasts. I walk to work, which is where when (damn foreign language!) I usually listen to my shows, and depending how fast I walk, I can make it through one 1h show a day.

Roughly.

And my backlog is getting bigger and bigger! However, these are good shows, so I thought I’d share my newest playlist, so you can already prepare for those walks, train rides, flights, and so on.

Here goes:

WTF with Marc Maron. Great show with great guests and it’s so popular now that you’ve probably heard of it already. I’ve been listening to Marc almost since he started out doing the podcast and it has been consistently great.

Back to Work. Talk-show with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin about work, productivity, procrastination, and glutens. I like Merlin Mann a lot, so I do enjoy this show, but some episodes are more meandering than others, so it’s something of a weekly hit-or-miss thing. The same goes for the ‘After Dark’ companion episodes.

Latest in Paleo. I have just started listening to the show and while I don’t follow the Paleo Diet at all the health-related news in the show a great and it’s fun to listen to. Great hippie shit!

Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein. I have a huge backlog of this show and just haven’t found the time to listen to it! Roughly 20min long comedy show. Give it a whirl.

You Look Nice Today. Comedy Nerd Podcast. Great stuff, but there hasn’t been a new show out since March 2011, so I guess it’s that’s that. Well worth downloading the available episodes though.

What a bummer — another one gone! This makes me very sad, because this guy has been with me since I bought my first COIL album — the Unreleased Hellraiser Themes EP — when I was 13 or 14 years old and I have been a huge fan of his work since.

Sleazy‘s visual art career included work as a member of the influential British design agency Hipgnosis, creating iconic record sleeve artwork in the 1970s for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and, later, Factory Records. He took the first promo photographs of the Sex Pistols, created a highly controversial window display for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s clothing shop, SEX, and went on to design the logo of the hugely popular fashion company, BOY. In 1976 Sleazy met Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter and Genesis P-Orridge and together they formed electronic music provocateurs Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records, creating one of the first independent record labels of the era and laying the foundation for a new genre of music. The band was infamously described in the Daily Mail by Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn as “the wreckers of civilisation”.

TG ceased operations in 1981, after which Sleazy formed Psychic TV with Genesis P-Orridge and they produced two albums. The second, Dreams Less Sweet included his future life partner Jhonn Balance as a member, with whom he went on to form Coil and to release an extensive body of work up until Jhonn’s passing in 2004. Subsequently, Sleazy left the UK to live in Bangkok, Thailand and to continue his artistic and musical vision in the guise of The Threshold HouseBoys Choir and Soisong. (via The Quietus)

A couple of days ago I was sitting at home, not doing much except trying to fidget my feet under the space-heater so that they don’t freeze off, when I remembered getting a VHS from the library called Cinema of Transgression. That must have been sometime in the early 2000s (remember, the 1990s were a dry-spell for me when it comes to actually getting my hands on anything remotely interesting except the metalz). So I tried the Google and what is this? The fantastic Ubuweb, which I visit far too seldom (because it’s a time dump of almost epic proportions!), posted the clips that were on that video! Now, I remember those videos not being *that* transgressive and the only one that really made an impression on me was Richard Kern’s movie. Most of them are just odd and definitely NSFW.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve never really been into proper art that much. I mean, I do go to museums and look at art, but I don’t remember ever sitting in front of a painting being struck by awe. However, I do like outsider art and the stuff at the American Folk Art Museum in NYC. The last exhibition I went to intentionally was a Joe Coleman retrospective in Berlin, which was fucking awesome. And, gee, here’s my old post from back then!

I’d love to have one of his books and am also ogling Art That Kills: A Panoramic Portrait of Aesthetic Terrorism 1984-2001 by George Petros, even though it’s forbiddingly expensive, so that might have to wait a while. Years ago I got a Best-of of EXIT, a magazine Petros edited, which I liked.

Ahem, so…well, this posted started to go nowhere really and my feet are still cold, so I guess it’s time for — some Sonic Youth & Lydia Lunch!